Apply the Known Truths of Usability to Drive Website Effectivenes: This is an overview session which will help define user-experience and demonstrate how the user’s perspective should be taken into account when developing all the components of your site – from navigation, to image placement and calls-to-action. She will discuss the Top 10 elements affecting users’ website experience and conversions, and provide useful information on best-practices, minimum standards, and learned conventions in website usability.

UCSD: The first university to develop a department specifically made for human computer interaction, usability, and cognitive designUsability Testing: Conducted interviews, surveys and observations studies on social networks, websites, online blogging, and the usability of a triangulation module for the shuttle operations at UCSD

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Today, we will be discussing usability only on the internet. Many of the same principles apply to software and application design, but today we will be specific on focusing on online marketing.What does ease of use really mean? <number>

- Setting expectations correctly on web site<number>

62% of customers leave a Web site because they cannot find what they are looking for...and the main reason is poor Web site information architecture. —Boston Consulting Group Information architecture, specifically to the web, is 80% of usability<number>

Using controlled vocabularies and the right nomenclature for your user audience<number>

Using best practices, we can minimize these annoyances. On top of that, sometimes, we have to annoy the user. Sometimes, we have to keep that promotion. Sometimes, we need to display that banner ad for the sake of our business or our partner’s etc. But how do we display it so that it doesn’t annoy the user?

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website built to satisfy management, not users- “branding” becomes the focus, site is treated as an advertisement, visual design overrides usability- it takes an act of corporate bravery to put up a relatively austere, simple site engineering owns too much responsibility for UI designend result: the UI reflects implementation technologies, developers’ back-end design modelmany product mgmt teams can’t escape featuritis:“competitor A has these 5 features, competitor B has those 10… we’d better put them all in our next release.”<number>

\"In short, it appears, as many suspect, that distrust of the Internet undermines e-commerce. Specifically, those who perceive greater risks on the Internet are less likely to shop online. In turn, perceptions of risks are associated with bad experiences online\". Trust in the Internet: The Social Dynamics of an Experience Technology. (PDF) by William Dutton and Adrian Shepherd, Oxford University 40% won’t return to the physical store after a negative experience online (Boston Consulting Group)One of our clients, after implementing 3 of our changes (include header tags, get rid of redundant navigation, re-organize search), saw a 63% increase in conversions online<number>

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The rule of thumb in many usability-aware organizations is that the cost-benefit ratio for usability is $1:$10-$100. Once a system is in development, correcting a problem costs 10 times as much as fixing the same problem in design. If the system has been released, it costs 100 times as much relative to fixing in design.\" (Gilb, 1988) - Many are in the negative zone: Garage analogyFewer last-minute design changes Usable, appealing, and effective designs Simple, less costly documentation Credible marketing claims Compelling product demonstrations Increased sales Reduced need for customer support Longer market life

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Things we do as cognitive beings

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Left: The topmost “Buy Now” button is actually for the item above the first item shown here. If you line up the top/bottom of the photos of each product, you can tell which buy button goes with which product. However, it’s still very confusing due to the close proximity and the fact that each item is grouped between two lines with the wrong buy button!Right: Each city is way too close to each other. Space them out and separate them!<number>

Obviously, these are just the same pictures with very minor changes. However, they add a lot of value. This is the absolute minimum that should be done, a lot more can easily make these things more readable and aesthetically pleasing.The right could still use a lot of spacing and listing of the dates can be handled better. I could also point out that the US is the only country that uses Month/Day/Year, using this format is potentially confusing for the non-US people who are scheduling an exam.